


Third Time the Charm

by Brigantine



Category: Gunless (2010)
Genre: Humor, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/429764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a smart fella, sometimes Ben's a little slow to catch on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Time the Charm

"You sure about that?"

Sean huffed impatiently, "Yes, yes, I'm sure! Doc said, and I quote, 'Y'oughta be fit for some light exercise, but don't overtax yourself.'"

Ben glowered suspiciously down at him. "Did that include rollin' around underneath me in the barn?"

"Well he didn't _specify,_ no." Sean wriggled sideways. "Would you like me to go ask him?"

Ben shifted to head him off. "Jesus, no, it's just that hole still looks mighty raw."

Sean tucked his chin sideways, trying to get a look at the healing wound in his left shoulder. "Doc sewed me up pretty good. It'll take time before it stops looking red like that, though."

"It doesn't hurt?" Ben plucked up a bit of pale straw that had drifted into Sean's dark hair, spread over the old blanket. 

Sean snorted, "If I mess with it, of course it hurts!"

"Aha! I knew it!" Ben sat up, straddling Sean's thighs. "You great big liar!"

A feminine voice from the hayloft snapped, "Oh for heaven's sake!"

Ben yelped and flung himself into the straw beside Sean, burrowing beneath their blanket like a panicked prairie dog. In a moment he was out again, leaping to his feet and shaking the crisp straw off of himself. "Ow, goddamn, that's itchy!"

Sean sprawled on the rumpled blanket, naked as a jaybird, and laughing like a fool. He would have made a mighty pretty picture, if Ben hadn't been so mortified.

Jane swung her legs over the edge of the hayloft and swallowed a bite of apple. "After all you've been through, I can't believe you two are still arguing!"

Ben squawked at her, "How long have you been up there?" He cast about desperately for his trousers.

"I came up here to eat my lunch, lay down for a nice nap, and when I woke up there were the two of you, sparking in my clean hay. I was _trying_ to be discreet. What are you dashing about for?"

Ben flailed, "You! Naked me--! Him--! " He gestured sharply between himself and Sean, who watched him with bright amusement while making no attempt whatever to cover himself.

"If you're searching for your dignity," Jane told Ben, "I'm afraid that moment has passed. Anyway, it's not as though I've never seen a man in all his glory before." 

Sean nodded, "Jane in all her glory is fair glorious as well, I can attest."

"Thanks!" Jane grinned at Sean, bit into her apple to hold onto it, and started backwards down the ladder.

Butt-bare and with pieces of straw stuck in his hair, Ben stood staring at the two of them. "Well I guess you two got a head start on me. Ain't that dandy."

Sean beckoned him toward the blanket. "Come on, don't be sore, Ben. Remember, back then you were still trying to kill me."

"I," Jane told them, angling toward Blue's stall, "am going to take your poor, scandalized horse for a long walk, while you two catch up." She waggled her eyebrows, adding, "As it were."

Jane gave Blue the rest of her apple and led him toward the open barn door. "Honestly," she scolded, "I think this entire time he's hardly known where to look!"

The big bay tossed his head and whuffled at Sean, who countered, "You just keep your opinions to yourself!"

Ben raised an eyebrow at him. "Opinions?"

"Exactly," Sean agreed. "What does he know? He's a horse."

Ben rubbed at his forehead. "Sean..."

"Mmm?" Sean smiled and tugged at Ben's hand. "Come on. Where were we?"

"Sean, did all your scars come from me?"

Sean blinked at him. His eyes were every bit as blue as Ben remembered them ten years ago. "How did we get from kissin' to... Oh, this is why you've been goin' on about my shoulder."

Ben lay back with one forearm across his eyes. "How many times have I shot you by now?"

"I thought we were well past that," Sean complained, "what with the nakedness and hidin' in the barn, and all."

"Sorry," Ben groused, "I'm just having a little trouble shifting from daydreamin' about selling you to the Marshalls for bounty to keeping you for myself. And by that I mean _keeping_ you, for _myself,_ savvy?"

"Not until now? You never daydreamed once in all that time about keeping me instead?"

Ben made a face, feeling himself blush. "Maybe once or twice. Or so. Mostly I was just mad as hell."

Sean rolled onto his right elbow and gently pushed Ben's arm away from his eyes. "You are one stubborn, cranky bastard," he acknowledged. "So yes, I can imagine the difficulty, but stupid you are not, so pay attention to what I'm sayin' here. It's over, Ben. We took ten years and a gunfight that swallowed up an entire town - a very small town, but still, the entire damn town - but we have finally _landed,_ hundreds of miles and a whole different country's worth of territory away from Carson City, and this is where we start over. Right here. Look..."

Sean guided Ben's hand up to the healing gunshot wound in his shoulder. Ben resisted briefly, but finally allowed Sean to lay the palm of his hand against the hot, healing skin. Doc's careful stitches prickled against his hand. "This one's yours. The one in my hindquarters is yours. The rest of 'em, mostly I don't remember. I've had a lot of folk takin' shots at me over the years."

"Eleven," Ben recalled. "At least." One amongst those, Ben knew about all too well.

"Plus one idjit in Seattle who tried to knife me in an alley." Sean shifted sideways and drifted Ben's hand down the warm, smooth skin of his left side to a long, narrow scar just above his hip. The line of raised skin was so thin it was nearly invisible, except to Ben's fingertips. "He almost had me," Sean admitted, "but I was meaner than he reckoned." He leaned over Ben, brushing his lips across the thick scar on the right side of Ben's face. "You are the only person, except for maybe Jane, who has known me well at all, and has never underestimated me."

"You are one wily son of a bitch." Ben couldn't help smiling a little. "Just as well, I guess." He frowned again, remembering Jane angry and frightened, hollering at him on Doc's front porch while Doc dug Ben's bullet out of Sean's shoulder, and Sean tried not to yell, and bled a hell of a lot.

Sean rolled onto his back, tugging Ben along with him. "What's got you curdled up now?"

"Jane told me you conjured up a fight with the town smith that you never intended to walk away from. That so?"

Sean shrugged, wincing at the motion. "Might have been, at the time. Does it matter now?"

Ben settled on top of him, pinning him down tight. "Tired of killing, or tired of running from me?"

"Both, I suppose. Look, Ben, it's a warm day, neither of us is dead, and Jane has kindly closed the barn door behind her." He squirmed invitingly beneath Ben. "Could we please get along with the gettin' along, and save fretting over what's done for some other time?"

Ben gingerly traced the ragged outline of the gunshot wound. "You never regretted that night in Carson City?"

Sean ran his left thumb lightly over Ben's cheekbone. "Not the night, no, I never did regret any of that. The cursed morning after when Dan Gilford bashed down our door hunting for me and all hell broke loose... well." He touched Ben's scar, tracing what was left of his right ear.

"He underestimated you," Ben reminded.

Sean huffed softly, "I never meant to hit you during the fracas."

"You never looked back," Ben said. "You went out the window, and there I was, still tangled up in the sheets we'd shared, bleeding all over and missing half an ear. Gilford was dead on the floor, and I realized I'd been beddin' down with a goddamn outlaw. Not that... The outlaw part might not have mattered so much, back then."

Sean quirked an apologetic half-smile and wrapped one ankle over the back of Ben's calf. "I always regretted that, never coming back for you, I mean. Been tryin' to make that clear to you all afternoon."

"Well hell," Ben allowed, feeling wry and a mite foolish, "you always have managed to keep one step ahead of me," and he leaned down and kissed Sean's smiling face.

 

\--#--


End file.
